A Silent Lack of Faith
by arliddian
Summary: Rory cannot shake the lingering, insidious feeling that their baby girl has been lost to them, and they have no way of getting her back. Amy/Rory one-shot set after 'A Good Man Goes to War'.


**A Silent Lack of Faith**

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><p><strong>Summary:<strong> Rory cannot shake the lingering, insidious feeling that their baby girl has been lost to them, and they have no way of getting her back. Amy/Rory one-shot set after 'A Good Man Goes to War'.  
><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I felt that Rory didn't get much room to deal with the loss of baby Melody in the series, so here's my way of rectifying that.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>Don't own it; don't sue me.

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><p>When River drops them off after Demon's Run, Amy asks her to stay the night. She refuses with a sad smile (something to do with prison and time) and leaves them with the mysterious promise that they'll see her soon. Rory has become used to River's apparent omniscience, but it is unnerving nonetheless, and especially so now that they know who she really is. How can their own daughter know them so much better than they know her?<p>

Late that night, long after Amy has fallen asleep, he finds himself turning over River's every word and every action in his mind, searching for... something. Meaning, clues, a trace of himself or of Amy - he doesn't know. But he recalls each of their interactions, coloured by hindsight, as though he is wearing glasses with SHE IS YOUR DAUGHTER printed across the lenses.

He keeps coming back to the way she spoke to him the last time, in Stormcage, just before Demon's Run. He recalls the way she told him about her birthday trip with the Doctor: words tumbling out of her mouth, fast and excited like a child coming home from a party. He remembers the way she greeted him: breathless, wondering, like he was somebody important she had lost. Like she had been waiting a long time to meet him.

He knows that Amy believes that the Doctor will find Melody and bring her home. River herself had said that the Doctor would find her and care for her. But Rory cannot shake the lingering, insidious feeling that their baby girl has been lost to them, and they have no way of getting her back.

A week later, Rory finds Amy curled on the couch with his phone in her hand, gazing at a picture he had taken at Demon's Run during a moment alone together as a family. It is the one photograph in existence of little Melody Pond and her mother.

_I've seen this before, _she says quietly as he sits down and slips an arm around her.

_Well, you were there when I took it, _he tries to joke. She doesn't laugh. He doesn't blame her.

_It was in the orphanage,_ she continues as if he hadn't spoken. _In 1969. The little girl's room. Where I got - _

She breaks off and he tightens his hold on her. They both stare at the small screen in her hand, and he can't help the cogs turning in his mind.

He cannot help blurting out his thoughts. As soon as he opens his mouth, he wishes he'd stayed silent. _If you saw it in the orphanage, then that... that might mean we don't get her back. She... Didn't the little girl grow up there? What if-_

Amy shuts his phone with a snap and presses it none-too-gently against his chest until he takes it from her.

_Time can be re-written,_ she tells him fiercely, eyes flashing. She gets up and walks away without another word.

He stops vocalising his doubts after that. If Amy needs to believe, then he will not be the one to take that from her.

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><p>On Saturday, Amy announces that they are going to paint their spare bedroom.<p>

_What colour?_ he asks, bemused by her sudden interest in interior design.

_Pink,_ she says decisively. _Something pastel._

He realises that she wants to paint the bedroom baby-pink, and make it ready for the baby she still believes is coming home soon.

They do the painting together on Sunday afternoon and when they are done, they stand in the middle of the room and look around at their handiwork.

The walls are a perfect shade of sweet pale pink, a colour that reminds Rory of Melody's tiny hands. As he looks around, he thinks that he has never seen a sadder colour in his life.

Beside him, Amy tilts her head, thinking.

_She probably doesn't like pink,_ she muses aloud. _Maybe we should paint it green. Like, a jungle green, because she'll be an adventurer. We could do a mural or something._

He doesn't point out that jungle-green walls with a mural to match is the kind of room that only a child would have, and that Melody-the-child may never sleep under their roof. River, perhaps, but she's probably too old for monkeys and bananas on the wall.

The next Saturday, they paint the walls green. He manages to talk Amy out of the mural. Instead, he hangs a picture from their wedding on the wall, the nicest one of him, Amy and the Doctor.

_This way, when she looks at it, she'll be reminded that she'll always be loved and always looked after by the three most important people in her life,_ he tells her.

Amy gazes at the picture with her clasped hands against her chin. Then, suddenly, she turns and presses her lips against his, her mouth demanding and grateful.

Rory kisses her back more gently and tries desperately to believe in his own words.

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><p>River drops by for a visit one evening. It's clear that this is after Demon's Run for her too, but when Amy mentions the Byzantium, River shakes her head, looking puzzled. None of them are quite sure how to treat one another, and at first things are awkward and Amy seems uncharacteristically shy.<p>

Then River pulls out a bottle of wine from the back of the pantry (Rory wonders how she knew it was there), and after a couple of glasses each, they're talking and laughing and it's comfortable and warm. She regales them with stories of her latest escapades with the Doctor: a picnic on a planet populated by people with giraffe-like necks, a starliner cruise that went pear-shaped, a fancy party with the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Rory has trouble reconciling the tiny, fragile baby he held in his arms with the fearless, thrill-seeking woman sitting in their living room. He wonders how Melody became River, when she decided to change her name, how much of her comes from Amy, from himself. He offers tea so he can step away for a moment and breathe.

He fills the teapot and takes out the sugar bowl and the milk jug. As he goes to fix Amy's white-and-one, he suddenly realises that he doesn't know how his daughter takes her tea. Emotion comes crashing down on him like a wave. Here they are, gathering together like new friends, like peers who were thrown together by accident and who cobbled a relationship out of a few shared experiences. But River is their _daughter_. There should be a lifetime of shared history between them, not just a handful of mad adventures. He should _know _how River takes her tea because she's his daughter and he's her dad, and that's something a dad would know after years of making tea for his daughter.

_Oi! Stupidface!_ Amy yells. Ever since 1969, it's become her fondest term of endearment, and he finds himself smiling faintly despite himself. _Why's it taking so long?_

Rory takes a deep, steadying breath.

_Coming,_ he calls back. Then he places the sugar bowl and jug on a tray with the teapot and the mugs. He will let River make her own tea, and learn from that. He tries not to think about the possibility (_probability_, his mind whispers) that this is the only way he will ever learn anything about his daughter: from her grown-up self teaching him who she is.

He focuses instead on Amy's and River's laughter, which rings out to him as he returns with the tray. For now, they're all together, safe and happy. For now, that's enough.

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><p>Months pass with no word from the Doctor, yet still Amy keeps her unwavering faith that he will come back with their daughter in his arms.<p>

Rory has no such faith. It's been siphoned out of him. The best thing he can say about the Doctor is that he tries - he tries so hard to do good and to save everyone. But Rory, having worked at a hospital for so many years, knows that no matter how good you are at your job, no matter how noble your intentions, people can be lost anyway.

When Amy tells him that she has a plan to summon the Doctor, he inspects the route she has mapped for the 'crop circles' without comment and chooses not to point out that if the Doctor hasn't come to find them by now, he probably hasn't got any good news.

Instead, he fetches his car keys.

He might not share Amy's belief in the Doctor, but he believes in her, in their relationship, in the family that was created when he married her. And he knows that it is a belief he will always protect, no matter how little faith he has in anything else.

_Fin_


End file.
